CLSC Young Readers – Traci Sorell
Traci Sorell, author of We Are Still Here: Native American Truths Everyone Should Know, will present the first ever in person CLSC Young Readers presentation in the Hall of Philosophy.
The 2022 American Indian Youth Literature Picture Book Honor and 2022 Robert F. Sibert Honor Book, We Are Still Here, presents historical and contemporary laws, policies, struggles, and victories in Native Life, each with the powerful refrain, We Are Still Here, of twelve Native American kids. It is illustrated by Frane Lessac.

Too often, Native American history is treated as a finished chapter instead of relevant and ongoing. We Are Still Here offers readers everything they never learned in school about Native American people’s past present, and future. Precise, lyrical writing present topics including: force assimilation )such as boarding schools), land allotment and Native tribal reorganization, termination (the US government not recognizing tribes as nations), Native Urban relocation (from reservations), self-determination (tribal self-empowerment), Native civil rights, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), religious freedom, economic development (including casino development), Native language revival efforts, cultural persistence, and nationhood.

We Are Still Here is appropriate for readers aged 7 to 10 years old.

Traci Sorell writes fiction and nonfiction books as well as poems for children. Traci’s lyrical story in verse, At the Mountain’s Base, illustrated by Weshoyot Alvitre (Kokila, 2019) celebrates the bonds of family and the history of history-making women pilots, including Millie Rexroat (Oglala Lakota). Her middle grade novel, Indian No More, with the late Charlene Willing McManis (Tu Books, 2019), explores the impact of federal termination and relocation policies on an Umpqua family in the 1950s. Her debut nonfiction picture book We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga, illustrated by Frané Lessac (Charlesbridge, 2018), won a Sibert Honor, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Picture Book Honor and an Orbis Pictus Honor. It also received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, The Horn Book and Shelf Awareness. A former federal Indian law attorney and policy advocate, she is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and lives in northeastern Oklahoma where her tribe is located.

In addition to her CLSC Young Readers presentation, Ms. Sorell will visit the Prendergast Library on June 30th to meet with people in the county.

This presentation is made possible in part by a grant from Elise M. Besthoff Charitable Foundation, Inc.

Elise M. Besthoff Charitable Foundation, Inc.